You've got how to play a simple vibrato, and actually, it sounds pretty good. But you want to take it further. How can you make this key phrasing element even more interesting? And make it the best it can be.

Integrating it with other phrasing elements

The most common combination with vibrato is to do a whole tone bend first. Use that as your base note, then vibrato from that bend.

You can also add vibratos to your legatos as well. This is good practice for strengthening your individual fingers. And also make the vibrato sound more fluent from your transition note.

Doing vibrato with chords

This sounds so cool and very doable. You need strength in all your fingers so that you can move them together without any of them giving way.

Practise your vibratos with individual fingers. Making sure you work on your weaker ones more to build up strength. So that each note in your chord vibratos sounds consistent.

The pitch you are doing your vibrato to

Is it a sharp or flat?

You may be bending your vibrato from in key to out of key by a semi-tone, or starting from the fret below and bending it to the key. Which would be flattening the note.

Using it only when necessary

Too much of a good thing will diminish how awesome your vibratos. Use it when you want to create that specific feeling in your solo.

Making sure you are using the right type of vibrato for your improvisation

Get Inspired

Try mimicking vocal singers or saxophone players for your vibratos. Listen to how they phrase your singing, and try to mimic it in your lead playing.

Saxophone players also have wonderful phrasing that you can use to inspire your guitar playing.

Get Playing

Record your vibrato, make sure it's as good as you think it sounds. Then play your vibratos in front of people. Constantly improve it, so you get jaw-dropping faces in front of you. Girls screaming your name. (Or boys.) I've been to John Mayer concerts. The effect of a great vibrato is outstanding.

You want to be confident and be in control when you execute it every time. So you have consistency. No winging it. You want to be able to create what's in your head onto the guitar every. single. time.

If you need more help with your phrasing elements or with anything else with your electric guitar playing. Come contact us, we can do an introductory lesson to find out more about you and how we can come up with a program to help you.

If you are wanting to either enjoy the guitar when you learn to play it rather than feel lost and frustrated or you are wanting to make some massive progress on the guitar. Then getting a great guitar teacher that right for you is an important first step. Not all guitar teachers are the same, nor are they necessarily right for you, so let’s see what some of the things you can do to help ensure you get a great teacher that suits your needs and goals.

What are you wanting from learning the guitar?

Is there a particular style of music you are wanting to play? Are there any guitarists that you would love to play like? What are you wanting to achieve from your guitar playing? These are questions to ask yourself when you look for someone to teach you guitar. You want a guitar teacher who will be able to help you achieve what you are after. Typically, if you are after a certain style of playing. You want a guitar teacher will be able to provide that specific style. They will be able to help you progress faster along that route. So if you want a guitar teacher who teachers rock, then get a guitar teacher who is accomplished at teaching rock. Likewise, if you are a beginner, find a guitar teacher who has lots of experience teaching beginner guitarists as well.

How much do the guitar lessons cost?

This is a factor that plays into most people’s minds when they look at guitar lessons, and it is an important factor. You have to think of the lessons both as an investment and also the lessons are there to help you get something out of it. Now cheaper lessons may seem cheaper, but you will probably get less out of it as it’s taught by a less experienced teacher. Whereas an experienced guitar teacher may be able to achieve the same results in a quarter of the time. Even though the prices may seem higher for a more experienced teacher, you get what you pay for. So don’t just get the cheapest lessons you can find, that will definitely end up wasting your time and money in the long run.

Can you see yourself being taught of this teacher?

What are your first impressions? Does this teacher seem confident in his teachings? Do you trust what he/she has to say? DO you think you will do what he/she tells you to do?

Now it may seem obvious that you should do what your guitar teacher tells you to do. But lots of people still second guess a lot of what they are taught. And also make sure as you go into the lessons, especially if you have been playing guitar for a long time, to keep an open mind. Accept that they are the more experienced guitar teacher and know how to teach you.

Is this teacher going to teach you how to practise?

Practising correctly when you are away from your teacher is vital for your progress on the guitar. Whether you are a beginner, getting past those barre chord stages or at an advance level wanting to shred at 1000 notes per minute. You need to know how to effective practise to get the most out of your practising time when you are away.

There are a lot of great teachers out there who will teach you this, but a lot may not. This is definitely something you need to look out for. Once you know how to practise, your progress will accelerate like mad.

Can you see what their other students have accomplished?

Can they refer to other students that have achieved good results with them? Do they have videos of students and what they’ve said about the improvements in their playing?

Often when people look for guitar teachers, they look at how good the teacher is at playing guitar. But actually the most important thing is how good are they are getting their students results. This shows how good they are at teaching guitar. Which is what you want. You want someone who can turn you into a greater player than you ever could if you tried on your own or with online resources, books or with a friend. You want someone dedicated to getting you better at guitar and have the ability to do so.

Go and meet your potential teacher

As you are committing to trusting this person, letting them teach this amazing skill of guitar. It’s important that you meet them to ensure you are fully comfortable and confident they can help you before you start lessons. So when you do start, you are ready to take in everything they so and progress fast!

What experience does this teacher have in teaching?

When you look for your potential guitar teacher, ask them how long they have been teaching for. It’s important for you to find someone who does have a certain amount of experience when it comes to teaching guitar. You could get a beginner guitar teacher, but you won’t get results as quickly. Why is that? Because they have less experience in solving people’s problems, challenges, and getting them results. The more experience they have in helping people reach their goals, the quicker they can do it for you. They should also have taught a lot of different guitar students and more importantly, students who are similar to yourself. Both of these will help protect you to ensure you don’t have a teacher who is using you purely as a guinea pig.

With all of these points to consider, make sure you go for a teacher who you can definitely trust to get you the results you are looking for. And someone who genuinely cares about you and your progress on the guitar.

If you are based in East London and looking for a guitar teacher to either help you get started on the guitar, or help you solve some frustrates you have with your playing and to accelerate your progress on the guitar. Click on the button below to get in touch with us. We ask that you fill in a short form about yourself, so we can find out how we can help you. We offer a free introductory lesson so you can find out how we can help you achieve your goals on the guitar.

Are you beginner guitar playing struggling to know whether you should start on the acoustic or electric guitar? Read on to find out which instrument will help you make the most progress when you first start learning how to play the guitar.

The big myth

First, I’m going a big myth that goes around amongst beginner guitar players. I’m not sure where this myth has come from, but it’s so untrue that it’s worth pointing out the facts so you can make a clear judgement based on the rest of the article with this in mind.

“It’s better to start on the acoustic guitar, because the acoustic guitar is easier to learn on, and then you get the electric guitar once you get better at playing.”

This statement is not true at all. Based on many reasons. As a beginner guitar playing, you are much better off starting with an electric guitar. Let’s see why:

The first thing, on either the acoustic or electric guitar, when you first start, you will have some challenges. These include your finger strength, your fingertips, your wrist and struggling to find the strings and knowing where the frets are. With this in mind, the electric guitar is much easier to play because it has thinner strings that are easier to press down while your finger tips have not yet toughened up yet and your finger strength is still weak.

And on the acoustic guitar, you have a big body that you have peer over to see your fretboard and see your strings to see what you are playing. This design doesn’t help your posture and makes the whole process much harder when you first start to learn how to play the guitar.

For these reasons, with an electric guitar, you are less likely to get tired and have pain when you are playing, so you can practise for longer. Making more progress early on means you can slowly gain strength and build up the toughness required in your fingers as your body leans to get used to playing the guitar. So with all these points in mind, it seems obvious that you would always start with an electric guitar. So let’s look at why this might not be the case for you.

Reasons to start with an acoustic guitar instead of electric guitar

There is only one big reason why you would start with an acoustic guitar, and that depends on the style of music that you want to play.

If you only ever want to play the acoustic guitar, you want to play acoustic style music, finger style songs. You don’t have any interested in ever ever playing the electric guitar because you don’t like it and for whatever reasons. Then get an acoustic guitar. You want to get one that you feel comfortable and feels easy to play on. This might be slightly harder in the beginner when you start playing for the reasons we talked about above. But the most important thing when you first start playing the guitar is you want to play an instrument that you love. You want to come home from work and see your guitar hanging on the wall or sitting by your chair and get excited about picking it up and practising for hours. If the acoustic guitar does that for you then you should definitely get an acoustic guitar when you first start.

If you ever want to play the electric guitar later down the stage then get an electric guitar for the reasons we stated before.

Do you ever want to improvise and solo on the guitar?

If you are into rock music and other type of music with lots of solos and improvisation. You get a great advantage with the electric guitar. This is because the electric guitar tend to have a lot more frets than an acoustic. Often acoustic guitars, when it goes past the 12th fret, you will find that the body of the guitar restricts you from playing the higher frets. This can really restrict you when improvisation and perhaps not being able to play certain solos because of it. If you love the idea of improvisation and soloing then an electric guitar will be highly beneficial to you.

My advice

I would personally always recommend that you get both acoustic and electric guitars if you are ever considering playing both at one point. I would start with the electric guitar and set some goals to achieve, and then get an acoustic later on down the line.

The most important thing to repeat once again is that you want to start on the instrument that gets you the most excited. If you are excited by both acoustic and electric guitars, then get the electric first. If you only ever want to play the acoustic guitar, then get the acoustic guitar. And whatever you do, stay persistent, and keep playing even when you’ve got struggles and challenges. The limiting factor when you first start learning how to play the guitar is not whether you have an acoustic or electric guitar. It’s whether you put in the effort and work into progress in your playing. That makes the biggest difference of all.

Are you wanting to start playing the guitar but don’t know where to start? Do you want someone to guide you along a proven path that you know will get you to where you want to be? Do you want to have the ability to play your favourite songs with ease?

We are here to help you progress at the guitar from beginner to advance. Whether you play the acoustic or electric guitar, find out how we can help you reach your goals by clicking on the button below to schedule your free assessment lesson. Where we will discuss how best we can help you.

There may come a time when you are lacking motivation for practising and playing the guitar. Perhaps you’ve been busy with school or work recently, had a holiday, or anything else. Or you are struggling with something and feel like you are not getting anywhere with the guitar. It’s time to use some of the following tricks to help you kick-start your guitar playing again.

Have you written down what you want to do on the guitar?

It’s useful to know what you want to achieve on the guitar. One – it gives you a target to aim towards. Two – it keeps you focused, so you aren’t off doing other things that won’t help you in the long run.

Things that are useful to consider may be the type of songs you want to play; if you want to be in a band; do you want to perform and do it confidently; do you want to be able to express yourself better with the guitar improvising?

All these examples are the type of things you might consider when working out what you want to do.

Once you’ve done that, write up your goals onto a piece of paper. Now pin your piece paper up somewhere obvious. Perhaps next to where you practise your guitar. This is so that you can remind yourself what your target is.

What’s your practise environment like?

Where are you practising when you are at home? Do you have a space that you can comfortable do your practising in?

The best situation for you to be in is where you have to put minimal effort in between you moving from that comfortable sofa to practising the guitar.

Having your guitar in a case, having to get your music notes out of your bag, not know what to practise. They are all things holding you back from practising as soon as possible. Creating this imagery mental barrier. Have you ever heard people say, “getting dressed and ready for the gym is half the battle of actually going?” Keep it easy by having everything out and ready for you.

Have you got anyone to help motivate you?

Even the best people in the world struggle with motivation at some point. Having someone to keep you accountable, whether it’s a teacher or being in a band, or committing to playing with friends will help encourage you to practise.

Make sure the people that you surround yourself with regarding playing the guitar are supportive. Some people may be less enthusiastic about your guitar playing compared to other people, so it’s important that you have people who will keep you motivated to get better.

Are you struggling to get results from practising, and that’s why you are not enjoying playing?

If after investing a lot of hours into practising and still feel like you have not made much progress. It can be demotivating.

Firstly, check if you know how to get results from practising. For some people, they might know exactly what they need to do to get to their goal. For most people, you might need a teacher who will be able to help you with your practising. That’s what we do here at Guitar Tuition East London. We help you to know exactly how to get to your goal as quickly as possible, and with you putting in the effort to practise. You will see results quickly and not feel demotivated when practising.

Make sure when you are practising, you need to make sure you are practising, not playing the guitar. You need to challenge yourself, so you don’t end up in a rut or staying in a box. Separate the time you use for playing the guitar and practising as two different things.

Reward Yourself with Little Wins

When you achieve something new, write it down! Keep all your achievements in a notebook so that when you are feeling down about your progress. You can look at it and see how far you have come.

Keep other notes about new revelations so that you don’t want to remember what new thoughts you had last time you practised. Saves you lots of time, and keeps you focused as well.

I hope you’ve found this article helpful. If you would like to find out how we can help you to improve your practising to help motivate you on playing the guitar and improving then get in touch. We offer a free introductory lesson to let you find out more about how we can help you.

8 Causes For Why You May Struggle to Improve Your Guitar Playing

Today we are looking at the top 8 of the most common reasons that people struggle with improving on the guitar.

I have seen from people I’ve met, students and musicians who have come to me asking for help, struggling and frustrated, wondering how they can improve their guitar playing. I want you to watch out for these, spot the common reasons so that you can avoid them, and make more improvements to your guitar playing overall.

Watch video with Darryl to find out what these reasons are.

1.People Give Up Too Easily

The single one biggest reason that I see that causes guitarists to not improve their guitar playing is just that they are not persistent enough. There will be challenges and difficult parts to playing the guitar. Your fingers and wrist will hurt, I will be lying if I said you can play the guitar and never have any pain. But you need to get past these problems, you need to find a solution to solve the problems that you have. Whether you do this by yourself or get someone to help you. You should never ever give up. Working through your challenges will make you a much better player afterwards.

2.Keeping Playing The Same Things Over and Over Again

We have lots of people who come to us having played for 5, 10, 15, 20 years who have struggled to improve. The main reason we see is that they keep playing the same things they are comfortable with over and over again. For some, it might be playing the same songs over and over, or doing similar exercises, using the same instructional DVD or books. Keeping doing the same things all the time will not help you help you to make big improvements in your playing.

3.Only Learning to Play Songs to Improve Their Guitar Playing

We often see this with self-taught guitarists, whether they are learning electric guitar or acoustic guitar. They look up their favourite songs and perhaps the tab or the video for it and go learn that song. Now when you learn songs, while you do learn some new things, you are not going to make leaps and bounds of improvement on your guitar playing. The most important aspects of becoming a true musician and guitarist rather than just a copycat is the understanding the fundamentals that go into these songs. How are they put together, what techniques are used and why they are used. Wouldn’t you rather know all the building blocks and be able to play any song you want? Rather than learn one song at a time? You need to be playing more than songs if you want to improve your guitar playing.

4.Getting Too Content To Improve Guitar Playing

This happens almost subconsciously for most people and before they know it, and before they even realise it, they haven’t improved in months and years. What is important is to put yourself into the cycle of learning and stay there. Many people hit their goals or milestones and get too happy and then forget to think of new things they want to do. So you need to always aim for another goal when you are playing to motivate you to improve your guitar playing, whether you are wanting to learn to play electric guitar or acoustic guitar.

5.Not Having The Right Information At Hand

A lot of people will go in search of the information they think they need on the internet to try to improve their guitar playing. They haven’t gone to a professional, and they end up with random exercises that aren't right for them. The problems with random exercises and information is that they can be wrong for them in so many ways. Such as being it’s too hard, it’s too easy, there’s too much of it, too little of it, in the order order, the wrong information altogether! They are practising them the wrong way, not enough practise of them, it’s not congruent with what they should be learning to reach their goals. You really need specific information that’s specific for you to make drastic transformation to your guitar playing.

6.Not Getting the Help Needed to Improve Their Guitar Playing

There are a lot of beginner guitar players who believe that they do not need a teacher. That guitar is easily self-taught, and it is still effective. This is just not true for so many reasons. There are also lots of the guitarists who get to a point and think that they are too good for a guitar teacher and that they won’t be able to help them or won’t have anything to teach them. Thinking this way means a teacher will struggle to teach them because they are not willing to be taught.

And behind it all, trying to teach yourself will always be a struggle as playing guitar requires such precise technique and skill. There are so many professional guitarists and musicians who still have a teacher and coach who helps them with their guitar playing. All the while, you just don’t know what you don’t know yet, so trying to find information for something you didn’t know you need is difficult and will hinder your guitar playing progress.

7.Not Believing in Themselves

To play the guitar, you must believe you can. A lot of people don’t give themselves enough believe and think that maybe they are just struggling because they are not talented enough. This holds them back from wanting to committing fully because they are scared of failing. Remember, no babies ever left the womb being able to play guitar straight away. The skill of playing guitar is learnt through various different experiences that all come together. It’s important that you believe that you can play like the guitarists that you aspire to, to even give yourself a chance of succeeding.

8.Holding Themselves Back from Succeeding

There are some people who are actually subconsciously holding themselves back from improving their guitar playing. This is mainly because they are worried about how much effort and work it will take to get there. And I would say is that if you really love playing the guitar and really enjoy music, then no amount of work is too great to ensure that you get to do something you really enjoy! And it won’t feel like work after awhile once you get past some of the initial challenges of getting your brain to work with your hands and body. Every time you play, you are building that momentum to improve your guitar playing for your whole entire lifetime.

What To Do Next?

Are you wanting to improve your guitar playing and feel like you are in one of these traps and don’t know how to get out of it? Do you want to have some more variety in your playing but don’t know how? Are you wanting to be able to express yourself and make the guitar sound great when you play?

If this sounds like you at all and you are based in London, then speak to us about how we can help you progress and improve your guitar playing. In fact, we are so sure we can help you that we provide a free introductory lesson to talk about what challenges you are having, whether you are just starting out a beginner guitar playing or you are an advanced shredder, we know we can get you to progress.

Click on the button below to go through to our contact form to speak to us today.

Understand Why You Are Getting Stuck With Learning Guitar Online On YouTube Or From Books

As more and more guitar resources, apps, games are appearing, we are seeing more and more frustrated guitar players who have attempted to learn online or from books. Whether it’s through YouTube or from books. They often leave people struggling rather than succeeding at what they love to do. In this article, we look at the main issues and why you may be struggling to learn guitar online from YouTube or from books. These are very common and problems that we’ve seen from lots of students who have come to us asking for help.

No Feedback

One of the problems with YouTube or books is that you aren’t getting feedback, so even though you think you know exactly what they are doing on the videos, you can’t see certain things about yourself. And because you don’t have feedback, you aren’t sure why you aren’t sounding right and know what is actually going on and what the problems are that needs fixing.

You don’t know if the person is good or if the material is right for you

So the first problem is, is the person teaching you actually a good teacher? So for online guitar lessons, it's very easy for people to access the internet and start teaching the teacher. They may be a good player, but that doesn’t always translate into being a good teacher. So there are a lot of YouTubers and guitar teachers online. There are a lot of good teachers, I’m not saying all of them are bad. There are lots of good and also a lot of bad teachers out there.

The problem is that the material that you are watching, how do you know they are the right level for where your guitar playing is at? It’s often up to you to select which materials are right for you, so how do you know that the materials are definitely right for where you are at right now? And what the problems or areas you need more teaching in to overcome? Often our students come to us with big blind spots that they didn’t even know they had, and they are busy focusing on something else. And once we start working on the blind spots with them, that’s when the real results come.

No real accountability

There is no one to hold you accountable. When you are meeting with a teacher face to face, there is someone to encourage you to do the practise, to help you if you are struggling to practise. There is someone who if you don’t do your practise, is there to encourage you to do so and challenge you when needed. With YouTube and books, it’s very easy to let things slide, or ignore the lessons. And when you don’t understand something to abandon it, which can leave holes in your playing.

Generalised information

YouTube and books use a lot of generalised information when actually you need specialised information. For example, you and your guitar learning is like a car. So when going online, they say yes you need good tyres, and make sure your engine is running well. But actually when you and your car have problems, you need to specific manual with your engine and your tyres and your exhaust. And that is what happens online. You need specific information to help you with guitar playing. You don’t generalised information that may help general people. Generalised information will help you in a long term to a certain extent, but the real key is in specialised information that will really help you right now to make progress and continue in the long term to get you the results a lot quicker.

Getting your questions answered

Generally, you will have questions at some point about your playing, and about the guitar. And someone students even have problems that they don’t even know how to put into words and they need to show someone by playing the guitar to them. Sometimes writing down the questions may work, but sometimes you do need to show them what the issues are. With most guitar lessons online, it’s hard to be able to get those specific questions you may have answered. So getting feedback in person can definitely help a lot with that.

Online guitar lessons make you good at playing in your bedroom

However, they often lead to be less confident when playing in front of other people or playing with other people. Those are big skills that you really need to experience, to learn how to communicate musically, learning how to count and play with other people. Online lessons often make you struggle to experience these things, so then it’s easy to lack confidence and make it a struggle to play at parties or in front of other people.

What To Do Next?

We hope this guide has helped you understand a bit more about the reasons why you may be struggling online and know that these are very common problems. To resolve these problems quickly, the best way is to find a great guitar teacher.

If you are based in East London, and you are struggling with learning guitar online, we would love to hear from you. In our lessons, you can get specialised coaching and training in person. Get in contact with us by clicking the button below, we offer a free introductory guitar lesson so we can see where your playing is at, and how we can help you reach your goals. Look forward to hearing from you.